companies

Carbon Robotics

Seattle robotics company that builds the LaserWeeder, an AI-guided autonomous implement that identifies and lasers weeds without chemicals or soil disturbance.

Carbon Robotics was founded in Seattle in 2018 by Paul Mikesell, a veteran of Isilon Systems and Clustrix who had spent time at Uber working on deep learning and computer vision before turning his attention to farming. The company's flagship product, the LaserWeeder, tows behind a tractor and uses high-resolution cameras and onboard GPU compute to identify crops versus weeds in real time, then fires targeted lasers that destroy weeds at the meristem so they can't regrow, without disturbing the soil or spraying a single herbicide. The company has since expanded into a broader autonomy platform, including the Autonomous Tractor Kit, which lets growers retrofit existing tractors to drive LaserWeeder implements without an operator in the seat, and has said it is developing a new, unannounced AI-powered farm robot. Its equipment now runs on more than a hundred specialty-crop farms across North America, Europe, and Australia, weeding vegetables and other high-value row crops where labor and herbicide costs have historically eaten into margins. Carbon Robotics has raised roughly $177 million to date, including a $70 million Series D round in October 2024 and a Series D extension in October 2025 led by Giant Ventures, and now employs around 260 people.

Founded

2018

Headquarters

Seattle, United States

Sector

robotics